Rhodium103

Rhodium103, 8 months ago to random

A while ago, I tried to take a screenshot of all the cookies you could opt in and out of to visit a website (The New European, if memory serves). It took some effort to get it on one image.

The word count of this list was 4-5 times the word count of the article itself.

And I hate to think much energy our collective CPUs waste churning through this nonsense just so a company can spend $0.00000000001 to know that I once visited some blog.

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

As we are on Mastodon, we should stop calling it "like-bait" and start calling it masto-

No, never mind.

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

Everyone should bring a large bag of £1 coins to meetings, and there should be a box in the middle of the room.

So, if you want to repeat a point that's been made before, it'll cost you.

ned, 9 months ago to Sexism

Andy telling it like it is.

Reporter: You're the first person ever to win two Olympic tennis gold medals. That's an extraordinary feat, isn't it?

Andy Murray: I think Venus and Serena have won about four each.

#misogyny #sexism #Patriarchy

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

So I assume international chess is also going to revise that rule where pawns can change to a queen, then?

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

Terry Pratchett wrote a lot about people who overuse exclamation marks - with five famously being the sign that someone wears their underpants on their head.

If he had developed as a writer in the 2010s instead of 70s and 80s, he would have said that about the laugh-with-tears emoji.

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

Oh boy, if you're entertained/horrified by AI being a total dipshit, you're going to love this thing we have called 'people'.

grammargirl, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

OMG! I still need to fact check this, but I'm praying it's true because I am dying to use this example the next time I talk about the ethics of using ellipses. It's perfect.

I can still use it if it's fake, but it's so much better if it's true.

(Do any of you happen to know what this book is?)

[UPDATE: It's "Spartina by "John Casey." Thanks, everyone!]

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

"Male" and "female" connectors are outdated, sexist, and hetero-normative.

Time to call them what they are: "top" and "bottom" connectors.

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

We could have a thousand nuclear missiles heading our way and the news media of Normal Island would lead with "economy projected to stall".

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

I specifically tell all my project students to avoid Sci Hub because it's naughty and bad.

I make sure they don't do it by showing them all the mirrors and carefully demonstrating how to tell they're on a mirror that will accept DOIs, that way they're perfectly informed and will know if they've accidentally landed on it so they can click away.

Always telling them "It's called Sci Hub, and once again to make sure you do NOT search for it, its Sci - S C I - hub."

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

It's always "you need to build up a tolerance to crop failures" and never "billionaires should build up a tolerance to not having yachts".

Rhodium103, 9 months ago to random

Please upgrade to our £3.99 tier if you wish to tie the laces on your Amazon™️ SmartShoes™️©️. By not unfailing to not untick this box, you agree to share detailed location data of your walking routes with (un)limited third party advertisers.

Rhodium103, 10 months ago to random

Just got laid off from my job at Mastodon dot Social. I was a programmer responsible for the feature that detects if a new user is a journalist, and then demands they solve a 5-dimensional Rubik's Cube so they think it's way more complicated than it is.

Rhodium103, 10 months ago to random

The Simulation Argument suggests that when you die, there is no afterlife, just a black screen that asks "Thinking about the last 85 years, do you recall seeing an advert for Coca Cola?"

Rhodium103, 10 months ago to random

Fine, I'll bite. The news keeps telling you that Threads is a runaway success with 100 million users, but Instagram has like 2.3 billion to bootstrap it.

That scale is like if you locked 100 people in a room, offered them pizza, and only 4 took you up on the offer while 10 collectively decided to ask you to remove the broken glass from the toppings first.

Rhodium103, 10 months ago to science

A brief request for the #Chemistry and (formerly?) #ChemTwitter community:

One of my MSc students is researching the communication of #GreenChemistry to students and others, so if you have a few minutes spare, please take their survey here: https://hull.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/communicating-green-chemistry-principles-to-the-public

No identifying data is collected, etc. But it does ask for institution primarily to differentiate who will have been exposed to my green chemistry course this year.

teacherbuknoy, 10 months ago to random

I am today years old when I found out that Nginx is actually pronounced as "engine X".

I just walk around in God's green earth, saying "ngeeengks" the entire time 😭

Rhodium103, 10 months ago to random

4 year old has chickenpox, so I'm taking the day off to deal with itching, worrying and to eay chocolate while watching Frozen on repeat... but enough about my psychosomatic symptoms and needs.

Rhodium103, 10 months ago to random

They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, so people fleeing Twitter because it was run into the ground by a billionaire capitalist and moving into Jack Dorsey's Bluesky and Mark Zuckerberg's Threads is hilarious.

Rhodium103, 10 months ago to random

For more #camelCase discourse, here's a pub in Kineton...

markmccaughrean, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to Astro

Just when are the media going to take the hint & stop giving the four-letter word astronomer endless column inches to parade their self-aggrandising & money-making “it’s always aliens” wibble?

I feel complicit even tooting about it, but seriously, this isn’t just “harmless entertainment” – it’s part & parcel of a continuing undermining of trust in science for personal gain & worse.

#Astrodon #AntiScience

errantscience, 10 months ago to comics

This is a Sankey diagram of how a typical lab project goes. Let us know if we missed any categories ⁠ ⁠ #Sankey #DataVis⁠ #cartoon #cartoons #comic #comics #instacomic #instacartoon ⁠ #academia #science #research ⁠ #errantscience